Friday, 9 May 2008

Friday, 21 March 2008

The California Celery Rush began on May 9, 1847, when celery was discovered at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. News of the discovery soon spread, resulting in some 30 people coming to California from the rest of the United States and abroad. They triumphed in their find and held exhibitions to show off the finest specimens, which were sold to wealthy investors from around the globe.

They ate all the celery and forgot to plant any more so they all went home again later that year. On January 24, 1848, gold was discovered in the exact same spot, leading to the popular belief that a pot of gold can be found at the end of a celery show.

Tuesday, 13 November 2007

A little known study first published in the Journal for the Nutritional Sciences in 1985 theorises that the consumption of a kilogram or more of celery daily enhances the cognitive processes to the extent the it should be possible to complete a doctoral thesis in less than a year. The study was conducted by the relatively unknown K Rashkova in Bulgaria and debate rages to this day as to the accuracy of these claims with some even suggesting that the hypothesis was made with no actual experimental data. In the original paper Rashkova highlighted his theory with some provisional data with the promise of a fuller statistical breakdown when his trials were concluded. However nothing more was heard and he has still not obtained his own doctoral thesis. Recent consensus is that the Rashkova may have succumbed to an extended bout of what doctors tend to refer to as 'wishful thinking'.

The word celery features in a new phonetic alphabet, recently created by Canadian social services, who wanted to get away from the stigmas implied by the old Nato phonetic alphabet. It would be greatly appreciated if all readers could switch to the use of this alphabet as soon as practicable

Friday, 13 April 2007

This rare version of Gloria Gaynor's I will survive was only found on the b side of the limited edition picture disc.First I was afraid, I was petrifiedTo try to live without celery would be suicideOh how I love the watery tasteAnd how I love it's fibrous feel If you wanted to destroy meIt's the first thing you would steal.......

I looked in the fridgeAnd behind the couchWherever you hid that celery I'd find it outBut then suddenly I sawThen I suddenly realisedThat if I was a celery stickThere's one place that I'd hide.....

Chorus

It was under the bedUnder the bedI find the celery at lastBefore I lost my headAnd now I've squirrelled it awayAnd now I've stored it in the fridgeThat's what I saidIt was under the bedOooooh

Thursday, 12 April 2007

The infamous planks, which the captives of pirates were made to walk during the "Golden Age Of Piracy", were not made from wood. They were in fact made of celery, for two reasons.

1. If the captive was too heavy, the plank would snap before the captive reached the end, providing much hilarity amongst the crew.

2. If the captive was light, and made it to the end, the natural springiness of celery again made it much more entertaining - when the captive tried a discreet and dignified jump off the end of the plank they found themselves hurtling upwards, usually bashing their heads on the underside of the crow's nest before smashing through the plank on their way to the bottom of the briny.

Thursday, 5 April 2007

In 1876 the Austro Hungarian empire was thrown into turmoil when the merchant classes led a revolt against taxes. Most hated of all was the Celery Tax, which had been considered iniquitous when introduced in the 1840's, and had then been regularly increased. Celery was seen as "the little luxury everyone can afford", not just in the low countries (as has been well documented), but across Central europe since the 1750's, but the celery tax ate into the customer base very quickly. First to suffer were the very poor, who were immediately priced out of the celery market, but as the tax burden grew heavier and heavier, the wealthier peasants, and even burghers started to feel the pinch, and farmers found demand for celery was plummetting.

In '76, the worm finally turned, as the merchants found that they, too, were no longer able to afford the celery which was so much a part of their daily lives, and a pamphlet, entitled "Against the Gentrification of Celery" began to be circulated. As the upper middle classes began to forcibly resist the celery tax, the poorer and more downtrodden followed suit, until the Duke of Hapsburg gave way, and removed celery tax altogether, in what was known as the Budapest Celery Amnesty.

An interesting aside to this story is that the little town of Unterdenverdegris had it's very own Lady Godiva moment as a result of this crisis. The mayor of the little town was begged by his wife to stand up to the Hapsburgs, and refuse to collect the celery tax. He laughingly told his wife that he would do so, if she would ride naked through the town on a donkey. This she did, but there the parallels with Godiva end. The mayors wife was, to put it kindly, a rather homely lady, and once the people of the town found out why she was undertaking this naked ride, they swore never to complain about celery tax again, if only she would promise never to repeat her daring ride.

Monday, 2 April 2007

The legendary Dennis Holsworthy-Jones, the only man to have survived the Baltic Sea's Great Windsurfing Disaster of 1934, escaped the small, remote island he found himself stranded upon only by utilising the dense field of celery he found thriving there. By constructing a small raft from celery sticks, tied together with fibres torn from the shell of the little known Arctic Coconut, Dennis had the means to row back to civilisation. Unfortunately, in building the raft, Dennis ate vast amounts of celery, resulting in a severe case of Celery Delusion. This caused Dennis to take a somewhat convoluted route to shore; where he began 4 miles from the Polish coast, he eventually arrived in Riga, Latvia.

Thursday, 29 March 2007

Celery is packed with pentopeptides, the latest anti-ageing ingredient. A leading cosmetics manufacturer was recently threatened with legal action for claiming that celery was not contained in its product when their manufacturing plant was raided by the celery police and was found to contain 43 tonnes of the vegetable. When asked why the company made this claim, a spokesman said "well, celery's just not cool, is it?"

Wednesday, 28 March 2007

A brief passage concerning celery from little known 18c Welsh novelist Arwyn Jones novel "The Tiny Mind" was for a time mistaken by scholars for a lost section of the book of Ezekiel. It was this which led to the extraordinary "celery cults" of midwestern America, about which so much has been written.

This poem was published as part of a joint anthology with Byron, in 1817. The collection, entitled "To all the greenest pastures" was primarily concerned with salad stuffs, but, being of the romantic era, was not without it's references to root vegetables.

Thursday, 15 March 2007

Until now, the prosthetics used to create the heads of Kling-ons in the popular television series "Star Trek" have been made from a rubber, taken from a cast of the actor's head. However, recent developments in preservatives means that the substance of choice, celery pulp, now no longer dissolves on contact with human skin, and is set to replace the rubber. "Celery is ideal for our purposes," said the show's Head of Make-Up and Prosthetics, Danbert McEagleburger. "It also cuts down on the food bill too - once the guy's scene is over, he can just eat his own damn head."

Thursday, 1 March 2007

Between 1978 and 1981, the Chesham and District Conservative Ladies Association embarked on an escalating campaign against celery. Initially, the vegetable was banned from Association meetings, on the grounds that it was crude and ribald in shape, and ought not to be seen in public. After a while the Ladies Association decided that it was their responsibility to protect the public at large from the evils of celery, and so was launched the infamous, and increasingly extremist and brutal, Celery Limitation Subcommittee.

The CLS, as it became known, started by writing to local groups, progressed to picketing greengrocers and salad bars, and by the end, were thought to be behind acts of violence and intimidation towards local market gardeners. Much of the suffering could have been avoided, except that the local council followed a policy of appeasment, resulting in a ban on celery on all council premises, and local bye-laws being passed to prevent the eating of celery in public.

Eventually, an enquiry by the City of London police force revealed that the local police were too cowed by the CLS to interfere, and that the shadowy group was carrying out vigilante attacks on local celery eaters. Their web of informants had spread fear throughout the area, and there were reports, never confirmed, that they were planning an attempt to overthrow the government, and put in their own anti-celery administration. Today, the ringleaders remain behind bars, pending a Truth and Reconcilliation project.

Tuesday, 20 February 2007

Following in the American of tradition of providing nicknames for cities (Chicago, The Windy City, New York, the Big Apple, and Los Angeles, The Devils Armpit), Collingbourne Ducis in Wiltshire decided to call itself The Celery City, in 1978. The idea was not a success.